Reserve Your Hire Car Child Seats and Restraints upon Booking

With the schools now starting to break up for the summer holidays the UK travel industry is going into top gear. Hundreds of families will be flying off to warmer and hopefully drier climes for their main holiday of the year; many of those families will have a hire car waiting for them at the airport when they land. Hopefully they will have checked when they booked their rental car that the appropriate child seats/restraints would be available for the vehicle.

Some families have had problems when picking up the hire vehicle as they find that the necessary safety seats, booster cushions or restraints are not available for their children to use. This of course should not happen if the car rental company were made aware of the requirements when the booking was made. But the onus is on the customer to ensure that these arrangements are in place upon booking. Don’t expect the company to be able to supply seats that have not been previously requested upon picking up the car. These seats are in high demand and pre-booking is essential. Staff will be able to advise exactly what kinds of seats are required.

Avoid these potential problems by booking your hire car with a well known company like Hertz who have introduced Britax baby/child seats and booster cushions throughout the UK and Europe. They have also trained personnel to fit the seats correctly and supply fitting instructions in several languages.

The law about child restraint in cars applies across Europe. The requirements are that rear facing baby seats must never be used where an airbag is fitted to the seat. Booster seats must be used for children over three years of age and up to 135cm in height when travelling in a car or goods vehicle fitted with seat belts.